John Watson

The US presidential elections, we were told ad nauseam, were too close to call. Some such commentaries had a partisan motive, while others were based on ill-informed poll interpretations or plain timidity. In this election year, Australians can expect much the same muddied mix of commentary, with one obvious difference. The prevailing view is that Labor will lose office and it won't even be close.

With probably eight or nine months until election day, Tony Abbott's Coalition does still hold a handy lead in recent opinion polls, which show Julia Gillard's Labor government trailing by between 54-46 and 51-49 per cent on a two-party basis. The apparent stalling last month of Labor's climb out of its mid-term polling abyss was enough for some to declare the government was not competitive going into 2013. But what do polls themselves, as well as a closer look at their methodology and their history at this stage in the electoral cycle, tell us?

Let's start with the bleeding obvious, albeit the obvious often ignored in reporting of statistically insignificant shifts from poll to poll. The fine print on all polls declares a margin of error, usually about 3 per cent. This means there is a 95 per cent probability the real figure is within plus or minus 3 per cent of the reported levels of support. That covers the disparities between current polls. Of course, when multiple polls repeatedly show one side of politics leading, as they have almost without fail since the 2010 election, the degree of reliability is much higher.

Indeed, that was the case in the US presidential race, in which Barack Obama led Mitt Romney all the way to polling day in a large majority of the swing states on which victory depended. The focus on nationwide polls was misleading. State electoral college votes decide the presidency. State polls of likely voters consistently put Obama in a comfortable position to win the required 270 electoral college votes. Furthermore, US law prohibits polling of mobile phone users who, research shows, tend to be less conservative than voters who retain landlines, as one might expect. It should not have surprised when Obama won by 51-47 per cent, a margin of 5 million votes, and became the first president since Ronald Reagan to win two elections with an absolute majority of the national vote. Parallels with the US in Australia include the growing difficulties of polling voters without landlines. The frequent focus here on primary votes also recalls the wrongheaded reliance on national polls in the US. Australian elections are not decided on the primary vote but by preferences - especially now that one in five voters does not give their first vote to Labor or the Coalition parties.

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Whereas conservative parties once split their vote and relied on preference votes to overtake Labor, the latter now relies heavily on preferences to boost a primary vote that is lower than in decades past. It would once have been unthinkable that Labor could hold office with a primary vote of 38 per cent, as in 2010, but that reflects the rise of the Green vote from 1.7 per cent in 1996 to 11.8 per cent, most of which flowed back to the ALP (much more strongly than Australian Democrats votes ever did).

No one remarks that the Liberals won ''only'' 38.7 per cent of the primary vote, tied with Labor's then 62-year low, in John Howard's landslide 1996 victory. All that mattered was the two-party vote of 53.6 per cent. Yet many commentators focus on primary votes even as they combine the Liberal and National parties' support for comparison with Labor.

Setting aside concerns about methodology and interpretations, polls have a record of changing in the sort of time that remains before Australians get to cast a meaningful vote. The history of the past 25 years, the modern polling era, shows that eight or nine months before the nine elections in that time the government trailed on the two-party vote on seven occasions. The government lost only twice, in 1996 and 2007. (There was a tie in late 1989 and a 10-point lead to the Rudd government in late 2009, which makes Labor's self-destruction in 2010 all the more extraordinary.) Averaging the polls for Fairfax and News Ltd eight to nine months out, the government trailed by roughly four points in 1986 and 1992, by six points in 1995, by two points in 1998, by 12 points in 2001, by two points in 2004 and by six points in 2007. In other words, the Gillard government's position is comparable with the support for four of the returned governments and clearly better than in 2001 and 2007. The Howard government survived deficits that blew out to 18 points at the eight-month mark in 2001 and eight points just two months before the 2004 election.

Does this mean we can confidently predict the Gillard government will retain office later this year? Of course not. Labor could be smashed. But assertions that Labor cannot win are equally baseless, especially as Abbott's near-record disapproval ratings are a handicap that did not apply to any past winner from opposition. My tip? If nothing big happens to alter the political landscape, the result will be decided by a couple of percentage points either way, which is the norm in federal elections. The bookmakers give Labor a one-in-three chance of victory, which seems reasonable odds at this point.

Voters have most of this year to make up their minds. While they do so we can expect to see the media closely track every little shift in the polls. This is a cottage industry that sells papers and attracts hits online. Regrettably, this polling business also influences the political mood and process far more than it should, especially as it is utterly irrational for even statistically random ups and downs to be treated as not only meaningful but predictive of what 14.3 million enrolled voters might decide after all the events of the year to come. With such mumbo jumbo, Nostradamus would feel right at home.

200 comments

A good piece. Through the yelling of pundits spruiking one side or another (and the lovely rusted ons for both sides here in the comments section), at the end of the day it will be decided on the day by ordinary voters who probably don't infest blogs with partisan bile making their own minds up. Niether a continuation of the current Government or a change to an Abbott government will affect our lives much at all, despite dire predictions from both sides.

It would be good to stop this years election turning into a popularity (or should that be un-popularity?) contest between Gillard and Abbott. Unless you live in their electorates, you don't get to personally vote for them or not anyway!

Commenter

Act Rationally

Date and time

January 22, 2013, 5:54AM

"Unless you live in their electorates, you don't get to personally vote for them or not anyway" - well put. Now, could you please tell Labor that so that they can sack their Scottish spinsmeister? Can we also get back to understanding mysogynism as it was meant to be before Gillard/Labor completely abused the word?

Commenter

hbloz

Date and time

January 22, 2013, 7:13AM

hbolz, for the record the 'spinmeister' isn't Scottish, he just likes to pretend he is,he was actually born in London in 1959, needless to say his Wikipedia biographyis now more carefully groomed than a wicket at Lords.

Commenter

SteveH.

Date and time

January 22, 2013, 7:25AM

@hbloz - understanding mysogynism - the pm was absolutely correct about Abbott, you should read a DICTIONARY sometime, Oxford dictionary may help you... I see you write in this paper everyday and yet you still have nothing to say, you just make an idiot of yourself. PS the PM is Welsh not Scottish..Just goes to prove your ignorant aswell.

Commenter

Really

Date and time

January 22, 2013, 7:27AM

Notice you didn't count yourself as "ordinary voter", and what's the big idea of beating the second placed commenter into first place ?

I very much doubt that many political pundits share your rose coloured view that "a change to an Abbott will affect our lives at all".

Have a look at the sackings in Queensland and Abbotts on the public record of more.

Commenter

J. Fraser

Location

Queensland

Date and time

January 22, 2013, 7:36AM

hbloz - you prove you still don't understand the term. Maybe go and look up the latest dictionary revisions?

Commenter

Think Big

Location

Sydney

Date and time

January 22, 2013, 7:37AM

@ J Fraser - I actually think TA, should he get in, will be a do nothing PM.It seems the focus is on winning and after that we figure out what's doing. I can't see any driven agenda, apart from bagging Labors mistakes and flops (of which there've been a few)

Commenter

wennicks

Date and time

January 22, 2013, 7:52AM

@Really - unfortunately for you, you just made an idiot of yourself - @hbolz is referring to John McTernan, Gillard's handpicked propaganda chief brought in from Scotland to try and convince Australians that everything Gillard does is good for us - he was the architect of Gillard's misogyny speech and Labor's political strategy against Tony Abbott. He also worked for UK Labor and used the same 'problem with strong women' strategy against UK PM David Cameron. What irks me is that our PM's speeches and announcements are all largely scripted and stage managed by McTernan because she seems incapable of competently prosecuting her case without his guidance. Before McTernan arrived on the scene we actually saw the 'real' Julia and quite frankly it wasn't great.

Commenter

Tim of Altona

Date and time

January 22, 2013, 8:26AM

I had decided to vote for Labor, then Labor decided to allow churches to discriminate. Labor lost my vote.

Abbott would be an Australian version of GWB. Cannot vote for him.

The Greens have Milne, who lacks leadership and appears to be rather naive. I wont vote for them.

Hmmmmm, looks like I will vote for the sex party. :-)

Commenter

Francis Allen

Date and time

January 22, 2013, 8:39AM

If you listen to Jones or Hadley....or read the rantings of Piers Akerman then no one will be voting for Labor.......yes, half the population have had a change of mind. As far as they are concerned the mad monk is already in.